| Activist
fights for better world
[Illai Kenney lives in Atlanta and is a member
of STAND!]
Richard Allen Greene travels to Atlanta, Georgia
to meet a 17-year-old relishing the challenge
of holding corporations to account.
Full article, click
here.
...In
2002, she was the youngest delegate at the United
Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg.
Illai
was struck by the resilience of people hit by
Katrina. Seeing extremes of wealth and poverty
there "made connections click" for
her about global responsibility.
"On
one side of the street it looked like suburban
America, and on the other side, a shantytown
would have been a step up - if you had running
water, you were rich."
She says young people can be just as effective
fighting for such causes as adults.
"People
wonder how I can have any influence given that
I can't vote. But I can go to elected officials
with 300 signatures of people who can vote or
will be able to the next time they're running
for office."
And
kids have buying power, too, she observes. "We
could get a lot of companies to look at us if
we say we won't buy their products. That's how
things were done in the civil rights movement."
'Whose
problem is it?'
She
is briefly taken aback by the question of why
a teenager in the suburbs of Atlanta should
spend her time fighting for people living in
India, Mississippi or South Africa.
Then
she replies with a question of her own. "If
it's not my problem, whose problem is it? I
know kids who have never been out of the Atlanta
area. I've been all over the world. I would
feel like I am taking for granted what I have
been given if I don't try to have an impact."
|
